Descended From The Wolf? Myths And Traditional Beliefs

Wolves are big predators. As a result, it is no wonder that wolf possesses enormous symbolic power in a wide range of cultures in both the past and the present. Often, wolves were not regarded in a positive light, which is presumably connected to their associations with both danger and destruction. For example, the Norse believed that the Fenris-wolf was fated to kill Odin, the King of the Gods, at Ragnarok before being torn in twain by Odin’s vengeful son Vidar.

Likewise, the Zoroastrian text called the Avesta states that wolves are a creation of the hypostasis of evil called Angra Mainyu, thus making them the cruelest of the animals that can be found upon the Earth. With that said, it is important to note that other cultures saw wolves in a much more positive light, often by associating them with warriors and war-making.

She-Wolf and Romulus and Remus

For people in the West, the most familiar example might be Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of Mars and Rhea Silvia who were abandoned in the wilderness but nursed by an old she-wolf. As a result, the she-wolf became a symbol of the Roman Empire, which sprang up from the city that claimed Romulus for its founder. This is the reason that ancient Romans never killed wolves for sport in the arenas in spite of the fact that slaughtering animals was a core component of ancient Roman entertainment.

Descended from Wolves

Likewise, there are a number of cultures that believe that they are descended from wolves.

There is a Turkic myth in which a boy is rescued by a she-wolf named Asena, who gives birth to ten half-human, half-wolf sons when she is subsequently impregnated by the boy. Of these ten sons, Ashina goes on to establish a ruling dynasty of the Turkic peoples, which is of course called the Ashina clan.

Also in Turkic mythology it is believed that a grey wolf showed the Turks the way out of their legendary homeland Ergenekon, which allowed them to spread and conquer their neighbours.

Oghuz Khan

Oghuz Khan was a legendary and semi-mythological khan of the Turks, first records dated back to 13th century. There are many legends surround this famous warrior character, and one of them particularly linked to the grey wolf.

Oghuz declares war on Urum Khan and marches his army to the west. One night, a large male wolf with grey fur comes to his tent in an aura of light. He says, “Oghuz, you want to march against Urum, I want to march before your army.” So, the grey sky-wolf marches before the Turkish army and guides them. The two armies fought near the river İtil (Volga). Oghuz Khan wins the war. Then, Oghuz and his six sons carry out campaigns in Turkistan, India, Iran, Egypt, and Syria, with the grey wolf as their guide. He becomes the Khan of the Four Corners of the Earth.

As with most ancient peoples’ beliefs, the wolf was thought to possess spiritual powers, and that parts of its body retained specific powers that could be used by people for various needs.

Oghuz Khan pictured with two horns as Zulqarnayn on a 100 Turkmenistan manat banknote.

Chechen Wolf

Chechens (Northeast Caucasian ethnic group) claim to have been born from a she-wolf, which explains why the wolf is a symbol of Chechnya as well.

There is one myth that the mythological founder of the Chechen nation, Turpalo-Noxchuo (Chechen Hero, who Chechens are descended from “like sparks of steel”), was raised by a fabled, loving “Wolf Mother”.

Old Chechen lore holds that the sheep was actually originally created for the wolf to enjoy, but man “stole” the sheep from the wolf (this is rather interesting considering that many Chechens in the past have in fact been shepherds). According to the ethnographic historian Jaimoukha, in olden times Chechens used to observe a wolf cult that would prevent lupine raids on sheep, by observing Saturday as being a special day.

Wolf Symbol for Mongolians

The Mongolians tell stories about them having been born of a union between a doe and a wolf, thus setting them apart from all other peoples of the Earth.

Today, people don’t really believe in it literally, but it still has its symbolic meaning forged in every Mongolians heart. They believe that wolves are spiritual animals and even if you wanted to hunt a wolf, it wouldn’t be seen to any hunter, but to a person with high spiritual power and who is meant for something great. The wolf symbolizes spiritual power, luck and expresses strong instincts.

Summed up, there are plenty of cultures that have seen wolves in either a positive or a negative light. However, whichever the case, the wolf has always been a symbol of considerable importance, which seems to remain as true in the present as in the past.

My Family Ghost Stories And Thoughts On The Afterlife

I do believe that there is life after death, because the body is one big battery that carries energy. This energy is made up of our own life force, our thoughts, what we see, smell, think, speak and touch. This energy is referred to as our soul, or as our aura.

When we die, this energy leaves our dead carcass and continues on. Where? I’m not sure. Energy cannot be destroyed and where it goes, is anyone’s guess. Could heaven and hell be worlds of pure energy? Is this where our departed energy goes after death?

If matter can have intelligence, why can’t energy? If there is a matter world, why can’t there be a world of pure energy? There are so many questions and very few answers. Perhaps one day, living human beings will know the full truth about the afterlife.

For right now, I will share some of my family member’s experiences with the paranormal that might be considered afterlife events: I will start off with myself first. When I was a small boy I lived in an old house on Effy Street in Fresno.

One night I heard a sound come down the sidewalk towards our house, which sounded like a rolling noise. As I looked at the window next to my bed, I noticed that on its own, it opened. A black tea kettle looking object floated to the halfway opened window.

This black object had a snout and the snout pointed at me. From the snout a mist came out and at this time I was screaming at the top of my lungs. My father came into the room to see what was wrong, the black object left and I could hear the rolling noise fade out into the distance. At this time my head was throbbing and I could see skulls flying about my room with wings. Even my own father’s face was a skull. The next morning I woke up and I was sick with the flu. From my open window I heard a serene woman’s voice call me by my middle

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name…..”Dale, Dale, come here”. As I looked out the window into the orange grove, I saw no one. I ran from the window and fell into the heater burning my leg. As it turned night, my flu got worse and my mother half asleep came into the room and gave me a teaspoon of what she thought was cough syrup, it turned out to be poison and I vomited the poison out of my system. Shortly after this horrifying incident we moved from the house and never had these problems again.

The only other ghost I saw in my lifetime was a ghost of a small white rabbit. This rabbit was a family pet named “Bugs”. One day, I left Bugs tied up in the backyard, hooked on a large rope, in that way he could romp around the backyard. I discovered to my dismay, that Bugs had broken his neck from the rope, which got entangled with the bushes. The next night, I saw a ghostly Bugs dart through the garage.

After the one sighting, I never saw Bugs again and I gave Bugs a proper burial. My mother Rosemarie Roberts, related this true ghost story to me. When she was a little girl, she went with her brother and father to Mexico. They stayed at a friend’s home. On one night, my mother and brother had switched beds in the middle of the night, but didn’t know how this occurred. Both of them were dumbfounded on how they switched beds.

The following night, my mother stayed up and watched a small light in the room. The small light became bigger and started to form shape. It became a small boy holding a basket of roses. The small boy went towards my mother slowly, dropping rose pedals along the way. My mother noticed that the rose pedals would dissolve when hitting the floor. My mother screamed and the apparition disappeared. My mother was shown a child saint when she was a teenager by a nun and she thinks that the apparition she saw was the saint.

My father Paul Marceau Roberts once was illuminated by having a vision in his sleep of sitting by a rock and the clouds opened up and he heard a voice in a strange language. He was able to understand the voice and was shown the end of the world (there was fire everywhere) and World War III. He woke up and my mother said his face was glowing. Those are our family ghost stories. I have 2 brothers and 1 sister and they never encountered anything of the paranormal.

The paranormal encounters were only experienced by myself, my father and mother. My wife Patricia Roberts, had a ghostly encounter with her departed father, this is her story: “I spoke to my dad the night before he passed away. It was frightening in a strange way, because he told me to be good and he hoped I would have everything in life that I need. I wondered did he know ahead of time that he was going to have a heart attack in the park the next day? I really don’t know.

After receiving the disturbing news, my dad passed away. I stayed in my bedroom all night crying. The next night I had my dad’s shirt and a few other items that he died in. I sat there reminiscing the thoughts of good times with my father. It was a very windy night and not once had I ever left the garage door open. The garage door leads to the kitchen. I heard a click and my Springer Spaniel jumped up on all fours looking out the door. I didn’t think anything about it.

About 3 minutes later, I heard the door open and a loud slam of the door. I promptly lifted myself out of bed and felt a very strong presence down the hallway. My dog after 10 seconds at the door, started to bark and growl. I knew it was my dad, I felt him near me. All of a sudden he was at the door, I didn’t actually see him in form, but more like an outline of him.

My dog was still growling at the door and I yelled out: ‘You’re scaring me, please dad go away!’ After saying that I felt him walking away and the closing of the door. My dog stopped barking. It has been 15 years and he has never come back again. At times, I do feel his presence in my dreams and he forewarns me of dire situations that may come about.”

Why certain people have paranormal events happen to them and others don’t, is probably that certain individuals are more acceptable to ghostly encounters. It’s as if they were in tune, like a radio to a certain station. It comes back to the energy that our body has surrounding it.

Some peoples’ energy is in tune for paranormal events, others are not.

“A Murky Path Down Archer Avenue” short documentary

When I’m not out filming projects in locations that I probably shouldn’t be at, I’m most likely reading books, online articles, magazines, you name it. I’ve been a big geek for history and mythology for as long as I can remember so very few narrative types hit the sweet spot for me as ghost stories do. Creepy tales–are they real or not? did they happen or are they completely bogus?–tend to be a nice collision of rumors, darkly wishful collective thinking, and factual history. That’s the type of cocktail that filmmakers seem to enjoy and I’m no different. Big-time, international legends (Robin Hood, Mulan, Pecos Bill, etc.) are widely celebrated, as they should be, but I’ve always felt that lesser-known, community-based stories are often underrated and underexamined.

There can be an inclination to throw away local legends (the kind all of us here on earth are bombarded with from time to time) when they don’t hold up to scrutiny. Fact-checking is best served in courts of law, not necessarily when it comes to telling fright stories. Ancient paper files disintegrate, get lost, catch fire, and are intentionally discarded. People lie and others make mistakes. It happens all the time. History–the concise, crunchy kind that we cling to nowadays–can be more delicate and elusive than we’re comfortable admitting. One flawed or misread vintage article can easily send a researcher down the wrong street. We must give space and respect for legends and how they function in fleshing out the bigger pictures of sociocultural values. If you squint and turn your head a certain way, there’s more truth being revealed than you may realize.

Chicago, Illinois is similar to many other big cities in the sense that it has a messy history. Lots of people came crashing towards a chosen area during a time when institutionalized documentation wasn’t quite on the same level that we have today (to put it mildly). Sometimes rumors and legends are all that we have left. They fill in the gaps where files fall short. Folks in the earliest decades of the 20th century, and beforehand, had a difficult enough time keeping track of the living so when it came to the dead….the details can get easily muddled.

A lengthy, old travel route coursing through Chicago and certain suburbs, Archer Avenue is heavy in history and graveyards which means that ghastly stories are inevitable. The value of these tales–and the value of neighborhood legends in general–is that they’re reflective of the histories of their respective locations. Religious obsession? Covered. Guilt, fear, and fascination regarding displaced peoples? Absolutely. Industrial Age tech shock: scary innovative equipment and automobiles turning machines into new monsters to watch out for? Very much there. The ever-present threat of poverty? Constantly highlighted in bright, blazing lights.

What were the past preoccupations of the people in your area? Dig into whatever the rumors are and you’ll gain plenty of insight.

The Archer Avenue stories presented in this short documentary are captured in their quickest essences. This is only a brief, 13-minute adventure–history, and twists on history, as a kind of carnival ride–not a day trip. It’s designed to spark your curiosity. The beautiful, awful, silly, unnerving folktales included here call for further investigation and in-depth reading. It may seem like there are too many creeps crammed into a singular line of land to be believed–do they ever bump into each other and, if so, what happens then?–but remember that these are tales circulating around just one street in Chicago so you can imagine what the rest of the city is like…..

*Derek Quint is an independent filmmaker based out of Chicago and the director of the short documentary, “A Murky Path Down Archer Avenue”. “A Murky Path Down Archer Avenue” is an entertaining and fast-paced ride through the folklore of Chicago’s spookiest street. This project is narrated by Michael Marius Massett and features music compositions by Andre Miguel Almaraz and Michael Marius Massett